This Week—Aug. 6th, 2021

This week's top releases feature thriller and historical fiction galore! Spread the word about these great new books and let us know on Instagram which one you're most excited to read!

GONE FOR GOOD BY JOANNA SCHAFFHAUSEN

The Lovelorn Killer murdered seven women, ritually binding them and leaving them for dead before penning them gruesome love letters in the local papers. Then he disappeared, and after twenty years with no trace of him, many believe that he's gone for good.

Not Grace Harper. A grocery store manager by day, at night Grace uses her snooping skills as part of an amateur sleuth group. She believes the Lovelorn Killer is still living in the same neighborhoods that he hunted in, and if she can figure out how he selected his victims, she will have the key to his identity.

Detective Annalisa Vega lost someone she loved to the killer. Now she's at a murder scene with the worst kind of déjà vu: Grace Harper lies bound and dead on the floor, surrounded by clues to the biggest murder case that Chicago homicide never solved. Annalisa has the chance to make it right and to heal her family, but first, she has to figure out what Grace knew―how to see a killer who may be standing right in front of you. This means tracing his steps back to her childhood, peering into dark corners she hadn't acknowledged before, and learning that despite everything the killer took, she has still so much more to lose.

At Summer’s End by Courtney Ellis



When an ambitious female artist accepts an unexpected commission at a powerful earl's country estate in 1920s England, she finds his war-torn family crumbling under the weight of long-kept secrets. From debut author Courtney Ellis comes a captivating novel about finding the courage to heal after the ravages of war.

Alberta Preston accepts the commission of a lifetime when she receives an invitation from the Earl of Wakeford to spend a summer painting at His Lordship's country home, Castle Braemore. Bertie imagines her residence at the prodigious estate will finally enable her to embark on a professional career and prove her worth as an artist, regardless of her gender.

Upon her arrival, however, Bertie finds the opulent Braemore and its inhabitants diminished by the Great War. The earl has been living in isolation since returning from the trenches, locked away in his rooms and hiding battle scars behind a prosthetic mask. While his younger siblings eagerly welcome Bertie into their world, she soon sees chips in that world's gilded facade. As she and the earl develop an unexpected bond, Bertie becomes deeply entangled in the pain and secrets she discovers hidden within Castle Braemore and the hearts of its residents.

THE KING OF INFINITE SPACE BY LYNDSAY FAYE

Meet Ben Dane: brilliant, devastating, devoted, honest to a fault (truly, a fault). His Broadway theater baron father is dead--but by purpose or accident? The question rips him apart.

Unable to face alone his mother's ghastly remarriage to his uncle, Ben turns to his dearest friend, Horatio Patel, whom he hasn't seen since their relationship changed forever from platonic to something...other. Loyal to a fault (truly, a fault), Horatio is on the first flight to NYC when he finds himself next to a sly tailor who portends inevitable disaster. And who seems ominously like an architect of mayhem himself.

Meanwhile, Ben's ex-fiancé Lia, sundered her from her loved ones thanks to her addiction recovery and torn from her art, has been drawn into the fold of three florists from New Orleans--seemingly ageless sisters who teach her the language of flowers, and whose magical bouquets hold both curses and cures. For a price.

On one explosive night these kinetic forces will collide, and the only possible outcome is death. But in the masterful hands of Lyndsay Faye, the story we all know has abundant surprises in store. Impish, captivating, and achingly romantic, this is Hamlet as you've never seen it before.

DUST TO DUST BY AUDREY KEOWN

The opulent furnishings and period theming of Hotel 1911 invite guests to experience the charm of the early 20th century. But for hotel clerk Ivy Nichols, the mansion also harbors secrets about her past and the family she never knew. When the Pittsburgh chapter of the Association for Gravestone Studies checks in for their national conference, Ivy is intrigued to learn that one of them has connections to her family.

The group plans to kick off their event by touring the historic graves thought to be on the hotel grounds. But they didn't plan to find one of their fellow members strangled to death afterwards. The police point the finger at the hotel's loyal manager, Mr. Fig, since no one else could have reached the victim's room. Ivy has other ideas. She believes Mr. Fig is innocent, and desperately wants to prove it. The inexplicable appearance of strange drawings, an old book, and a wig lead Ivy to a bizarre connection between the grave-obsessed guests and the murder. And when Mr. Fig confesses a long-held secret, Ivy fears she has put herself in the sights of not only the murderer but another dangerous criminal too. Who else had the opportunity to commit the crime? And is Mr. Fig all he seems to be?

Amidst a growing list of suspects with secrets of their own, and an unraveling riddle from her past, Ivy is in a race to catch a killer--and decipher a truth more earth-shattering than she could have imagined.

TOKYO REDUX BY DAVID PEACE

Tokyo, July 1949. The president of the National Railways of Japan vanishes. As American and Japanese investigators scrambled for answers, the case went cold--and it remains unsolved to this day. In Tokyo Redux, celebrated crime writer David Peace channels drama, research, and intrigue into this strikingly intelligent fictionalization of Japan's most enduring and haunting mystery.

Spanning decades, Peace's novel reveals how the lives of three men all come to revolve around the same inexpicable disappearance. Starting in American-occupied Tokyo, where tension and confusion reign, American detective Harry Sweeney leads the missing-person investigation for General MacArthur's GHQ. Fifteen years later, as Tokyo prepares for the global spotlight as host of the summer Olympics, private investigator Murota Hideki--who was a policeman during the Occupation--is confronted by this very same case, and is forced to address something he's been hiding for more than a decade. And twenty-plus years after that, as Emperor Shōwa lays dying, Donald Reichenbach, an aging American eking out a living in Japan teaching and translating, discovers that the final reckoning of the greatest mystery of the era is now in his hands.

The concluding installment of Peace's acclaimed Tokyo Trilogy, Tokyo Redux is a page-turning portrait of post-World War II Tokyo and an inside look into a storied crime that continues to haunt multiple generations.

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